Here's a question: Is body hardening, when performed using human flesh as the impact surface, too hard or would that be an acceptable level of impact damage? Back when I did bullshido Kung Fu, they loved having us smash the meaty parts of our forearms together. I figure that's like kicking your shin against someone else's to toughen it and thus too extreme, but now I'm curious.

Bruises happened, a lot. In fact the teachers pretty much said "Bruises or you're a failure". It hurt less as time went so I figured my muscles were getting tougher or my nerves were dieing.

2/15/2009 5:43am,

Rene "Zendokan" Gysenbergs

Quote:

Originally Posted by socratic

Here's a question: Is body hardening, when performed using human flesh as the impact surface, too hard or would that be an acceptable level of impact damage? Back when I did bullshido Kung Fu, they loved having us smash the meaty parts of our forearms together. I figure that's like kicking your shin against someone else's to toughen it and thus too extreme, but now I'm curious.

This is partial correct when it is done with great force. Two bones will collide which would be (almost) the same as hitting a wrapped pole.
While a pole is an inmoveble object and theirfore in theory would do more damage to the bones, I guess that the trainingroutine with a partner would start with medior impact that would increase more and more to the end of the training (it hurts less to you if you hit your partner harder then that he hits you).

When it's done with not that much force then you would only toughen up your skin and make your muscles more impact resistant without really harden your bones, which will cause broken bones in full-contact fights.

The other danger is that when you train this type of hardening is that the bones will not be hardend equal over the entire lengte. Some parts will collide more against eachother and other will (almost) not. Making the hardening proces irregular.

Best way is still the use of bagwork for hardening, you can be sure that every part of the bones can be trained. Working with routines:hitting the bag with every part of the bone exact with the same amount repetitions will leave out soft spots.
A heavy punchbag is no unmoveble object so the reaction won't be to brutal and cause damages to the bones.
And most important, you can use this training to "repair" weak spots from older training routines. Bagwork will harden the softer parts of the bone that were missed with the old training without further fortefying the hardest parts. It will make the hardening proces MORE regular. Equilizing the bones is not possible because bagroutine will never generate as much reaction then hitting an inmoveble object.

2/15/2009 10:20am,

TheRuss

Quote:

Originally Posted by socratic

Bruises happened, a lot. In fact the teachers pretty much said "Bruises or you're a failure". It hurt less as time went so I figured my muscles were getting tougher or my nerves were dieing.

Bruises themselves won't ruin your training, but if they wind up calcifying, they will. That's what ice is for.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zendokan

This is partial correct when it is done with great force. Two bones will collide which would be (almost) the same as hitting a wrapped pole.

I read "meaty parts" as meaning that the bones themselves had skin and a decent layer of muscle between them.

2/15/2009 6:25pm,

socratic

Bruises calcifying? Explain plz.

As for 'meaty parts', indeed I meant the areas of the body where the bone is not particularly close to the skin. So in my example of the forearm, the top and underside of the forearm rather than the side.

Here's a final question and my curiousity will be sated: Is there really any point to body hardening parts of you that don't really need it? It's been mentioned several times that muscles become impact resistant from this time of conditioning, so I wonder if conditioning your whole body, or at least a large part of it, in this way holds any serious benefits or whether the bad side effects become too great at that volume?

2/15/2009 7:21pm,

TheRuss

Quote:

Originally Posted by socratic

Bruises calcifying? Explain plz.

Hard to find resources, but if my Google skills are up to par, the fancy technical term is "myositis ossificans traumatica". Blood pools in a nasty bruise and bone forms.

I heard from a shaolin kung fu guy I knew that the best/safest way to harden the body is by hitting surfaces that "give" when you hit them. This somehow sends vibrations through the bone without the bone absorbing all the energy from the impact. As this guy stated the way karate guys train by hitting makiwara and other nongiving surfaces does effectively harden bone, but results in longterm damage to the body.

I don't know how true this is and have looked for evidence to back this theory up with no luck. Has anyone heard anything similiar to this before?

2/16/2009 10:53am,

TxSanshou

Depends on if you are doing it correctly or not , some people will tell you that knuckle conditioning is unnecessary but if God forbid you ever have to hit someone you don't want to hurt yourself in the process.

2/16/2009 10:56am,

Rene "Zendokan" Gysenbergs

Quote:

Originally Posted by socratic

Here's a final question and my curiousity will be sated: Is there really any point to body hardening parts of you that don't really need it? It's been mentioned several times that muscles become impact resistant from this time of conditioning, so I wonder if conditioning your whole body, or at least a large part of it, in this way holds any serious benefits or whether the bad side effects become too great at that volume?

Answer:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zendokan

When it's done with not that much force then you would only toughen up your skin and make your muscles more impact resistant without really harden your bones, which will cause broken bones in full-contact fights.

You don't have to harden every bone in your body. Primairely the striking bones and joints: hands, feet, knees, elbows, shins and underarms (if you use them as striking waepon).
Ribcage, back, upperleg, upperarm and skull can best be trained in sparring (because they have to be impact resistant and not strike hardend).

Ofcourse you can headbutt a punchingback a few thousand times, but it isn't that good for your brain and the skull is quit hard from itself. And running at full speed into a punchingbag (to try to harden your ribcage) will make you look like an idiot in the eyes of your classmates. And it isn't necesarry for fighting, unless you want to do breaking demo's, but I never had an opponent made out of stone and concrete.

So harden correct the striking parts of your body, the rest will adapt adiquat by training against resistent opponents.